By Cameron Castro (@Castro_Turf)
In my last article, How to Start a Weighted Ball Program, I outlined a generic template for the Weighted Ball program our pitchers follow - in a follow up I thought it would be beneficial to lay out some of the things that they do daily for warm up and recovery. As stated in the previous article:

I want to be clear, throwing weighted balls is taxing, but then again so is pitching. Pitching is inherently stressful, so we aim to train the body at slightly higher levels of stress than what is experienced in competition…read more

I recently reached out to Josh about writing something for the Pitch Mechanics site and we settled on how to go about implementing a throwing program that uses weighted baseballs - ya know since everyone will be asking Santa for velo this year. Especially considering Dr. Glenn Fleisig’s newest paper on weighted balls, Biomechanical Analysis of Weighted-Ball Exercises for Baseball Pitchers. Soon to follow are the days of the “Completely Safe Weighted Ball Program” that is ‘guaranteed to add 5-10 mph!’ Heck, there might even be a holiday discount if we’re lucky.read more

Pitching is different than almost every other skill in baseball. It is not a reaction. The pitcher is in total control. He decides when the ball is thrown, pitch type, pitch location, and pitch velocity.

Everyone else reacts to the pitcher.

Because of this, we often forget that pitcher practice needs to simulate the game as much as possible. This article will give you five ways bullpen sessions can become more game-like:

1.) Mix wind-up and stretch
The most important pitches a pitcher makes each game will come from the stretch. The ones under the most pressure, the ones that matter the most will come out of the stretch.read more

Velocity is all the rage nowadays. Everyone seems hell-bent on throwing as hard as they possibly can. It seems every pitcher in the MLB throws 95+, so If you want to join that illustrious group, you'd better be doing the same. With that being said, there are some differences in what the radar gun reads and what the hitter sees. Essentially velocity has three different categories: Actual, Perceived, and Effective.Actual Velocity

This is the easiest to understand of the three categories. Actual velocity is simply the reading on the radar gun. Although, just to clarify, the reading on the radar gun, especially at ballparks, is the
velocity of the baseball at or near pitch release and not in front of home plate as some have suggested to me. While the reading on a radar gun can be beneficial, understand it does not tell the whole story of velocity. To do that, we need more context.Perceived Velocity
This is where things get a little more interesting (and fun). Perceived velocity can vary from actual velocity because of essentially two factors: 1) A pitcher’s stride and 2) A pitcher’s release point.read more

In today’s baseball age, where a 90 mph fastball is now considered below average in Major League Baseball, the question inevitably comes up: how do I throw harder?

Recently I received a question along these same lines on Snapchat, where I field many baseball training questions each day. The question was a variation on the above: “How can I get stronger and throw harder?”

I did my best to answer this question as thoroughly as I could through social media – and in the process learned that there is in fact a limit to how much you can type in a single Snapchat message – and also posted it on Twitter. But, of course, this didn’t leave much room for elaboration. Thus, I wanted to take a few moments to expand upon the topic for everyone to take in. And, because I’d like to go into as much detail as I reasonably can, I have broken this article into three parts. All three segments, together, will touch on nine highly influential factors that affect velocity in baseball.read more